Elbert County News 060823

WEEK OF JUNE 8, 2023

VOLUME 128 | ISSUE 17

$2

Elizabeth elementaries near capacity District works on master plan as student numbers ramp up

BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

Elizabeth Police Chief Jeff Engel, left, discusses a case file with Officer Cameron Sage.

I’m originally from Wisconsin. I was born and raised in the southeast part of the state. It was a very good state to grow up in. I miss it a lot. I started my law enforcement career there back in 1990 and worked there until 2002 when I then

The Elizabeth School District held a special meeting on May 22 that included discussion of the in-progress master plan, an ongoing project to tackle the growth in the district’s student population. Representatives from RTA Architects and Western Demographics gave presentations to the school board.

There has been a steady increase in the Elizabeth and northwestern Elbert County population in recent years, along with the start of the area’s 21st-century baby boom in 2012.

Currently, both elementary schools are at or nearing capacity, creating a dire need for more space.

Singing Hills Elementary capacity: 499; 2023 enrollment: 495 Running Creek Elementary capacity: 434; 2023 enrollment: 382 Elizabeth Middle School capacity: 621; 2023 enrollment: 411 Elizabeth High School capacity: 941; 2023 enrollment: 672 Shannon Bingham with Western Demographics analyzed several factors to determine the student population trends through 2030.

He took several factors into consideration when running his analysis: total school district population, Elizabeth district births, age distribution, historical enrollment, interest rates and mortgage-ready buyers,

SEE POLICE CHIEF, P2

SEE SCHOOLS, P4

PHOTO BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON

Spotlight on police chief Jeff Engel Elizabeth’s top cop takes community-centered approach to leadership

BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

On May 1, the Elizabeth Board of Trustees announced the selection of Jeff Engel as chief of the Elizabeth Police Department. Engel served as the interim police chief from Jan. 30

until being selected for the permanent position.

According to the trustees’ official announcement, “Chief Engel was selected with the assistance of Lynn Johnson and Jerry Williams with the firm of KRW Associates from a total of 23 highly qualified candidates from across Colorado and the United States.”

On May 17, the Elbert County News sat down for an interview with Engel at the Elizabeth Police Department. Engel talked about his law enforcement experience, his

CALENDAR: 11 | VOICES: 12 | LIFE: 14

goals for the department and Elizabeth community, and what he does for fun outside of work.

Where are you from and what brought you to Colorado?

ELBERTCOUNTYNEWS.NET • A PUBLICATION OF COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

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2 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

POLICE CHIEF FROM PAGE 1

moved out to Colorado to teach at Pikes Peak Community College. I taught law enforcement and criminal justice. I really enjoyed teaching.

I worked for the Milwaukee Police Department and I was assigned as an instructor for the in-service academy at the Training Bureau.

I taught drivers’ training for four years and really enjoyed that teaching. I went on and got my graduate degree in public administration and started teaching as an adjunct at local community colleges. I really found a passion with instruction.

I came out to Colorado and taught and I made a lot of great connections. But I still had a lot of fire in my gut for law enforcement and being a cop. I then applied to the Douglas County Sheriff ’s Office and worked there for 14 years.

What made you want to pursue being a police chief?

My passion has always been to be a chief. Early in my career I was tasked by my FTO (field training officer) to find out what it is that I wanted to do. I was just a little baby fuzz. I told him that I just wanted to catch bad guys. He said that while that was noble, at some point in my career things just wouldn’t be that easy. He made me question what I wanted to do in 10, 15, and 20 years

‘One of the things I would like to move forward with is engaging the community with community policing opportunities.’

Jeff Engel, Elizabeth police chief

down the road. Some officers will stay on patrol their entire career and others will go into investigation or go into supervision or go into a specialty someplace. It was a pretty hefty lift for being young in a career but it was probably the best piece of advice I’ve ever received because it made me focus on what I wanted to do. It put me on the path of supervision and becoming a chief. It pointed me in the direction of getting an advanced degree and really focusing on management and leadership.

What do you envision for your role of a chief?

What I truly envision in being

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Elizabeth Police Chief Jeff Engel, left, and Officer Cameron Sage at the town’s police PHOTO BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON station.

the chief is broken down into three categories: 1. Administration: Being an administrator, where you’re doing the day-to-day operations, the management of things.

2. Community engagement: Being a part of the community. Being a part of the community fabric. At least where I came from in Wisconsin, law enforcement, firefighters and public safety were held in high regard because they provide an important service. Every entity of government provides an important service. There was a lot of support for law enforcement back in the day.

Obviously, times have changed a bit and the community support sometimes isn’t there. That is one thing I noticed about Elizabeth. There is such great support here. It’s remarkable.

3. Leadership: Leadership is the building of relationships with members of the organization and providing guidance and mentorship, and really engaging members of the organization to be the best they can be professionally and personally.

Oftentimes we spend more time at our jobs than at home, but when you really apply the tenets of leadership and help guide the men and women of the police department, they’re going to take that home and be better mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. That’s part of my position as a leader.

Are there any changes you plan on making to the department?

Yes. Some of the changes I’d like to make are taking a look at how we operate internally and where we can be more efficient. In law enforcement there is a lot of technology to help make things more efficient.

That is something we need to evaluate. What are we doing well, what do we need to sustain, and where can we improve our efficiency? That may mean the implementation of some technology, maybe improving a process somewhere, maybe requiring an evaluation of policy.

There are a number of different avenues we can go down. Those are some of the immediate changes I’m looking at.

You came from Douglas County that has a much larger police department.

Are you looking forward to working with a smaller department?

Working in a smaller department you have the ability to be a little bit more hands-on and involved. You sometimes have to because you don’t have the staffing. It’s a nice mix. I still have a lot of passion for going out and doing patrol, but I also have the passion of leadership and management and building community trust and community relationships. It affords me a very unique opportunity to kind of do all of that.

Are there any projects you are working on right now?

One of the things I would like to move forward with is engaging the community with community policing opportunities. We’ve incorporated what we call “walk and talks.”

When officers are on patrol, they get out of the squad car. They’ll start walking down Main Street, walking down Kiowa Avenue, meeting business owners and being seen out in the communities. Other agencies have incorporated “park and walks,” which is the same thing where you get out in the park and you engage kids that are playing basketball. You play basketball with them and just walk around in the park. When I was working in the city, my squad partner and I would do that quite a bit. It bridged a lot of gaps in the community. You can see a connection. We have such a great support from the community and the Town of Elizabeth, we need to reciprocate that.

What kind of things do you do for fun outside of your work in law enforcement?

I like to hunt and I like to fish. That comes from my Wisconsin background. I do enjoy being outdoors.

I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’ve got a motorcycle so I do like to go ride here and there. I’ve got some buddies that I go on trips with. All of my family is still back in Wisconsin so I go back every three to four months and spend a long weekend.

To learn more about Chief Jeff Engel, visit townofelizabeth.org/police.

Elbert County News 3

June 8, 2023

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4 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

SCHOOLS FROM PAGE 1

February field inventory (neighborhoods and homes), major housing developments in the school district, and housing growth (Elizabeth and Elbert County).

Bingham found that by 2030, the Elizabeth School District will see an estimated enrollment increase of 737 new students entering the district.

Projected enrollment growth (2030): Elementary school +393 Middle school +147 High school +196 Total = +737 new Elizabeth School District students.

“A lot of folks are looking for an escape from the Front Range and our community (Elizabeth) represents that in a significant way while simultaneously presenting a full palette of urban services to most residents with shopping, groceries, all sorts of commercial opportunities, entertainment and, of course, very fine schools,” said Bingham in his presentation. “That will be producing a lot of schoolaged children for Elizabeth

Graph of Elizabeth School District population 2010-2021.

School District because of how attractive the community is as a family location.”

Bingham found that twothirds or more of the new housing for the district is in the Singing Hills area, in

northwestern Elbert County east of Parker.

School Board Director Heather Booth asked Bingham how the projections would shift if Elizabeth West is developed in the future

IMAGE COURTESY OF WESTERN DEMOGRAPHICS

with the possibility of 1,200 homes.

“Speculating on something that is just bare ground right now is going to be difficult,” responded Bingham. “I would say that if his (Jim

Marshall’s) development went as planned, we might lead more toward the high side of the forecast (of student population).”

SEE SCHOOLS, P5

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Elbert County News 5

June 8, 2023

Douglas County Government Offices closed Monday, June 19, for the Juneteenth Holiday Many services are available at DoItOnlineDouglas.com

E-recycling: Saturday, June 10 Douglas County residents may dispose of unwanted electronics free of charge at Techno Rescue, 3251 Lewiston St. in Aurora, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and occasional Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Proof of residency is required. For a list of acceptable items, Saturday drop-off dates and more, visit douglas.co.us and search electronics recycling

Projected Elizabeth School District enrollment growth map.

SCHOOLS FROM PAGE 4

Bingham will continue to work with the school district and Master Plan Committee, model some scenarios based on selecting potential new school sites and ask questions about hypothetical enrollment on a certain opening day.

With the newly analyzed demographic data, the Elizabeth School District is working with RTA Architects to determine future needs.

“When we talk about cafeteria and gym space, and whether or not we have enough science rooms or maker spaces, or even career and technical education, we look for education adequacy. Can we deliver good, high-quality instruction in that building based on the spaces?” asked one RTA architect. “In the elementary schools, we’re already pushing up to where we don’t have any capacity and seeing some strain.

IMAGE COURTESY OF RTA ARCHITECTS

We don’t have big enough cafeterias; we don’t have enough special ed spaces. There’s real pressure in the district for preschool. As we push capacity, it is even harder to offer.

You can’t add another room for preschool right now because you don’t have space. We have a real constraint at the elementary level right now based on the trends.”

Currently the Master Plan Board is in the development phase of the plan. The Master Plan should be completed in August or September of this year, with a BEST Grant application being submitted at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024. Colorado BEST Grants help fund school construction and renovation.

The district also is hoping to have a potential bond measure before voters in November 2024. If a bond were passed, the Elizabeth School District would consider new structures or additions.

To watch the full meeting, visit elizabethschooldistrict.org/ domain/124.

RTA Architects representatives speak at the May 22 Elizabeth School Board meeting where discussions centered on how to deal with growth in the district, in an image from a video of the meeting.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH SCHOOL DISTRICT

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6 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

College aid might fall for Colorado farm kids Changes are meant to simplify FAFSA

BY JASON GONZALES CHALKBEAT COLORADO

Colorado students whose families own farms or small businesses might not be able to qualify for federal aid for college under revisions that are meant to simplify the complicated form.

The updates to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as the FAFSA, are the result of a yearslong effort to make the form easier for families to fill out.

Over the long term, financial aid experts believe the streamlined form will benefit families. But some of the changes expected to be rolled out this year might have unintended consequences, especially in the way families tally farm and small business assets.

Without a fix, experts worry that fewer rural students will go to college. Already, they are less likely than urban and suburban counterparts to go. A bipartisan group of

congressmen, including Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, is hoping to amend the new rules.

“Anytime you change something, there are going to be bumps along the way,” said Marty Somero, University of Northern Colorado financial aid director. “I see those as more rough patches. In the long run, this simplification process will help families with the whole process.”

Under the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in 2020, the value of family farms and small businesses will need to be tallied on the form.

The calculations might make it appear that some people have more money available to send their kids to college despite most of their assets being tied up in a business or farm.

Last year, a family with a farm worth $1 million would have been expected to cover $7,626 in college costs, according to a study by the Iowa College Student Aid Commission. According to the new form calculations, a family with that asset would be expected to contribute about $41,056.

Colorado has about 39,000 farms and ranches statewide, accord-

ing to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The state also has about 691,000 small businesses, according to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

Somero isn’t sure how many students from families that own farms or small businesses might not decide to show up on campus due to less financial aid available to them. He’s sure, however, that it will complicate financial aid for students already in college, he said.

He’s tallying how many UNC students that might affect. The school is hoping its foundation and donors will provide financial aid to those students.

“We’re certainly going to do our part to make sure that we get them to graduation,” Somero said.

But providing extra money can’t make up the difference in federal aid for the long term, he said.

In a March letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Bennet and three other lawmakers said they were concerned that the changes would make filling out the FAFSA more complicated for families and asked the Education Department to issue guidance for those families.

“These farm families, whose businesses are vital to our states’ communities and economies, need prompt and tailored guidance that considers their unique business model and will help families better understand how implementation of the FAFSA Simplification Act will affect their participation in federal financial aid programs,” the letter says.

A bill has been introduced in Congress to once again exempt families who own a farm and employ fewer than 100 workers. Somero said he supports the effort, but would also support a threshold for reporting certain farm or small business assets.

For now, Somero advises families and students to work with their counselors or college financial aid offices to figure out their financial aid options. He believes that colleges are willing to work with students and encourages families to ask plenty of questions, he said.

This Chalkbeat Colorado story via The Associated Press’ Storyshare, of which Colorado Community Media is a member.

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Elbert County News 7

June 8, 2023

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8 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

CSU scientists delve into cattle guts to cut emissions Fight against greenhouse gases enters new dimension

BY RAE SOLOMON KUNC

In many ways, the research pens at Colorado State University are what you’d find on your standard cattle feedlot. There are cows, of course, plenty of mud, and the inevitable odor of livestock.

But this feedlot, at CSU’s agricultural research and education center in Fort Collins, doubles as a scientific laboratory. It’s where researchers in the AgNext program — a specialized research group for sustainability in animal agriculture — are learning about the greenhouse gases cows produce as they stand around digesting food. The feedlot is tricked out with millions of dollars of equipment that allow scientists to track everything that goes into each cow, along with some of what comes out.

Specialized feed bins use radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology to track every ounce of corn consumed on a per cow basis.

Another piece of equipment called the GreenFeed machine analyzes the gases cattle exhale. It’s a bit like a

high-tech gumball machine, dispensing tasty cow treats — alfalfa pellets — on a schedule, and at the beckoning of a smartphone app operated by researchers.

On a chilly afternoon in March, Colorado State University Animal Sciences Professor Sara Place demonstrated the technology, tapping a button on her phone. A high-pitched electronic chime sounded and the alfalfa pellets dropped into an opening at cow level, catching the attention of a big-eyed angus who moseyed up for a bite to eat.

“He’s got his head stuck in the machine and he’s chowing down a little bit of a snack,” Place explained.

Despite common misconceptions about the perils of bovine flatulence, most methane comes out of the cow’s front end in the form of enteric emissions. That means each time an cow gets a snack from the GreenFeed machine, Place has an opportunity to get information.

“The air gets pulled from around the animal’s face, and whatever they’re respiring out goes directly into the machine,” Place said. “We can get real time methane emissions data from that.”

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that has a warming power 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years of emission.

The animal agriculture industry,

which includes all operations that raise animals for meat or dairy, produces more methane than any other human activity in the U.S. Climate experts say we’re running out of time to prevent climate catastrophe. To avoid the worst of it, experts say it is imperative to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically before 2030. Environmental groups have ambitious goals to reduce agricultural methane emissions by 30% globally by the year 2030.

But when it comes to emissions from the livestock sector, the science is still just emerging, and it’s not yet clear if the cuts will come in time— or how.

Place hopes to change that with her work in the research pens.

“We want to find solutions that can help mitigate those emissions to cut the climate impact of beef,” Place said.

A tricky proposition

Reducing the climate footprint of beef is a complex problem. According to Kim Stackhouse Lawson, director of CSU’s AgNext program, producing methane is just part of being a cow.

“They’re biologically supposed to make methane,” she said.

The gases are the byproduct of a complex fermentation process

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that happens inside a cow’s largest stomach, called the rumen. Changing that equation involves tinkering with the complex microbiological ecosystem inside a living animal’s stomach, which means there’s still a lot we don’t know.

For instance, there is still no experimental data on baseline emissions from the livestock industry.

“The data is not granular enough,” Stackhouse Lawson said.

The best understanding of the cattle emissions picture comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory, which derives its data from a model that uses emissions factors - essentially multipliers from a chart, so the data is based on equations rather than direct measurements from the animals themselves.

Stackhouse Lawson said the inventory does a decent job of estimating livestock emissions at the scale of the entire U.S. But for individual operations trying to account for the carbon footprint of their own herds, those numbers are too generalized to tell the full story.

“There’s too much variability between animals, there’s too much variability within region,” she said.

Stackhouse Lawson’s team is only now doing the work of developing SEE CATTLE, P10

Elbert County News 9

June 8, 2023

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10 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

CATTLE

Stackhouse Lawson hopes more funding could be part of the next Farm Bill currently being negotiated in congress.

Until more federal dollars start flowing, the research being done on cattle emissions is dependent on industry to fill the funding gap.

FROM PAGE 8

more precise numbers. She cited surprising initial data from CSU’s research pens that shows the quantities of methane cows produce can vary wildly from animal to animal, suggesting an entirely new frontier for the research.

“Is there a genetic component?”

She wondered. “Would we select animals that have lower methane?”

The CSU team is also looking at other variables like feed additives that can cut emissions outright.

John Tauzel, senior director for global agriculture methane with the Environmental Defense Fund, explained successful additives “will change the biome of the cow’s stomach to reduce the amount of methanogens—the organisms that create the methane.” It’s a solution he went on to describe as “really, really complex,” because of the complicated structure of the livestock industry and the biological intricacies of cattle microbiomes.

That complex problem remains only partially-solved, in part due to lack of funding for the research.

Tauzel pointed out that only 2% of federal funds that support research and development for climate adaptation and mitigation in agriculture go toward reducing enteric emissions.

“We need more investment in that space if we’re going to meet the reductions in timeframes that we need,” Tauzel said.

That investment is starting to come.

Just last week, the team at AgNext announced it had received a $1 million Conservation Innovation grant from the US Department of Agriculture.

The money will support continued research into emissions on the feedlot. It will also allow the researchers to expand their inquiry into cattle emissions to look at cows grazing in a pasture setting.

Industry’s stake in reducing emissions

Five Rivers Cattle Feeding bills itself as the world’s biggest cattle feeding operation. The Northern Coloradobased company runs 13 feedlots across six western states, with the capacity to fatten up to 900,000 head of cattle at any given time. A cow typically spends about six months on one of Five Rivers’ feedlots, during which time it can put on anywhere between 500 and 700 pounds.

“What we’re all about is efficiency,” said Vice President of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability Tom McDonald. “[We’re] getting cattle to perform at their best while they’re at the feedlot.”

Part of that commitment to cattle performance includes support for the ongoing work at CSU’s research pens.

“The whole goal here is to learn what our greenhouse gas footprint is, and then how can we improve it?”

McDonald said.

All of the emissions research animals at CSU are on loan from Five Rivers. The company also supplies the animals’ feed and has donated $600,000 worth of equipment to the cause, including the GreenFeed machines that collect and analyze cow exhalations.

McDonald said his company expects to recoup that sizeable investment and then some in the eventual efficiency gains made possible by the research.

Methane, after all, isn’t just a greenhouse gas. “Methane is energy,” McDonald said. “When energy is lost, that’s a wasted resource.”

CSU researcher Sarah Place said reducing methane emissions from cows could actually mean more beef

to go around. “[Methane] is basically feed calories the animal eats that actually get lost to the atmosphere,” Place explained.

That means the less methane a cow exhales as it digests, the more weight it puts on that ultimately becomes beef. In other words, a lower emitting cow is more efficient at converting corn feed to body mass than a higher emitting cow.

McDonald likened the company’s interest in lowering cows’ methane emissions to any other sound business decision.

“When we upgrade equipment at the feed mill, we look for energy efficient equipment. We strive to reduce our energy usage in those areas,” he said. “From a cattle performance standpoint, we utilize the tools available to help the cattle grow faster, gain faster.”

A race against the climate time horizon

But for all the enthusiasm from the agriculture industry, the work at AgNext and a handful of related research facilities around the country is still young. Scientists are working to translate promising treatments from the pristine laboratory setting to actual, scalable applications in the feed lot.

“We’ve got a lot of exciting research that is underway,” Stackhouse Lawson said. “But it’s not ready yet.”

That’s a problem, according to Ben Lilliston, director of climate and rural strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a climate and agriculture think tank. “[The technologies] are not proven yet,” Lilliston said. “We need to have emissions reductions really quickly, like in the next seven years. Speculative technologies are… You know, it’s not to say that they’re not worth exploring, but [I] wouldn’t rely on them as a real climate mitigation strategy.”

Apart from the scarcity of feedlotready solutions, Lilliston points to factory farming itself – an industrial system hell-bent on continual growth - as the main culprit.

“Even if you’re able to reduce emissions a small amount by some of these scientific advances, if you’re going to continue to grow and expand the number of animals that are part of that system, then you’re going to negate those gains,” he said.

He thinks of the emerging technologies as a distraction from the bigger question that we’re not asking: how many beef and dairy cows do we need in this country? After all, a more immediate solution to the livestock methane conundrum is to have fewer cows.

“Reducing the cattle herd is the clearest way to reduce actual emissions,” Lilliston said.

Of course, a smaller cattle herd would mean less meat and dairy on the market, which would impact consumers’ meal choices. It’s a situation John Tauzel doesn’t find feasible.

“For various reasons, whether that’s social, whether that’s economic, livestock products are going to continue to be part of a significant portion of the global diet for the foreseeable future,” Tauzel said.

That’s why he believes advancing research on livestock methane emissions is critical.

“If people choose to eat a hamburger, we want to make sure that when they eat that hamburger, it has the lowest methane footprint possible,” Tauzel said.

As for Place, she wants to find solutions that simultaneously work for consumers, cattlemen and the climate.

“At the end of the day, we want to make sure we create practical solutions that can be adopted in the real world,” Place said.

After all, people like their burgers.

It just might be easier to alter the microbiome of an animal’s gut than it is to change the cravings of a hungry planet.

This KUNC story via The Associated Press’ Storyshare, of which Colorado Community Media is a member.

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Elbert County News 11

June 8, 2023

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12 Elbert County News

LOCAL

VOICES Are you stuck in a cycle of stress and anxiety?

No real control

T

his week, our newspaper featured a story reporter Tayler Shaw worked on over several months. This FROM THE story tells the EDITOR heartbreaking story of a teenager who died after allegedly buying drugs laced with fentanyl through Snapchat.

Let’s get Thelma Grimes past the quick-reaction stuff right away.

No, the 18-year-old should not have been online looking for opioids. No one is saying she should have. What this story delves into is the fact that she DID NOT deserve to die from it.

Now, a pilot national case is moving forward — a program has taken the heartbreaking stories of nine families and filed a lawsuit against Snapchat.

Snapchat is the perfect example of how sneaky social platforms can be. When posts expire and are deleted not long after you post — how can anyone not think this is not an invitation for the bad guys?

As a parent of a teenage girl and growing boys — I am constantly living in a reality that you never really gain control.

While they protest — my children are told they are not allowed on either Snapchat or TikTok. I am not excited about Facebook or Instagram, but I do feel a little more secure in my abilities to monitor my daughter’s behavior and teach my 9-year-old son who is now dabbling in the two approved platforms in our house.

There are programs for parents out there such as Bark.

This service helps a parent track a child’s behavior on their phones and tablets. Using it, I have been notified when my daughter is doing or saying questionable things.

A publication of

When I interviewed the director of Bark earlier this year, I was told besides helping parents head off possible sexual predators, the services have also proven helpful in tipping off parents when their child is having suicidal thoughts.

But like most, Bark is not perfect. No service to police what your children are doing online is.

My daughter thinks I do not know but she does have or has had a Snapchat account. Our daughter has an editor/journalist for a mom and a cybersecurity expert for a dad. She had a bit of a disadvantage to other kids.

Humor aside — even with our skills, I know she skirts the rules. The temptation is too strong. When her friends are on TikTok and Snapchat – I can’t hold it against her that she wants to be.

But then I read the stories that are out there, including this week’s in-depth look from Tayler Shaw. Her story shows how easy it is to make shady deals on social media platforms. Her story shows just how little control our local authorities have.

After all, when a social platform has headquarters in New York or California — How can the Arapahoe County Sheriff ’s Office do anything? I am a little concerned with how little they have attempted to do in this case, but I do understand the obstacles.

Our own Attorney General Phil Weiser has said things are getting out of control with crime taking place through legal social platforms.

The problem, however, is until money become a focal point and these companies are having to pay a lot in legal fees and settlements — they really have no reason to do better for our kids, adults, and society.

Thelma Grimes is the south metro editor for Colorado Community Media.

Phone: 303-566-4100 Web: ElbertCountyNews.net To subscribe call 303-566-4100

I

was talking recently to a business owner at an entrepreneur networking event. He shared that he had been struggling with severe anxiety. I asked him UNLEARN why he hadn’t picked up the phone to call— IT at least to chat casually over what might be the source of his anxiety. He smiled.

“It was pride,” he said.

“I was too proud to reach out.”

Our conversation signaled something Christine Kahane important. Does seeking mental health help carry a stigma? Do you experience the shame of thinking, if you need help with your mental health you feel weak or be seen as incapable and undependable, something that can damage your reputation, and potentially as an entrepreneur, your business?

I did a little digging — here are some of my findings:

N

ot sure about you, but one of my

favorite pastimes is reminiscing with friends and family about the good times that we enjoyed over all the years we WINNING have been a part of each other’s lives. Oh, WORDS the stories change and grow in grandeur over time, but then we all laugh at one another as we realize the tall tales we are sharing about our favorite, crazy, and sometimes even cringeworthy Michael Norton events that we shared together.

We reminisce about those we have loved and lost. We remember our family and friends as tears build up in our eyes, recounting their most infamous moments that we can recall. And then we think about how angry we were with them at some point in our life, but we just can’t seem to remember why. Has

LINDSAY NICOLETTI Operations/ Circulation Manager

lshapley@coloradocommunitymedia.com

lnicoletti@coloradocommunitymedia.com

MICHAEL DE YOANNA Editor-in-Chief

ERIN ADDENBROOKE Marketing Consultant

THELMA GRIMES South Metro Editor tgrimes@coloradocommunitymedia.com

SCOTT GILBERT Editor sgilbert@coloradocommunitymedia.com

The stigma surrounding mental health and treatment is diminishing.

Societal stigma and the move to hide your desire to seek help is one of the biggest barriers to actually taking action to relieve and shift chronic anxiety and stress.

If you have anxiety or compounding stressors, you may feel like the stigma will affect your ability to get a job, your access to healthcare and insurance coverage for treatment or your acceptance in society as a whole.

Here’s some good news — the New York Times recently published these statistics: In 2021, 42 million people sought mental health care, up 27 million from 2002. Americans now see mental health care as reliable and a significant part of cultivating a better life for themselves and their families. More and more it is considered a part of a wholesome life, like having a gym membership or going fishing.

SEE KAHANE, P13

Reminiscing, lamenting — it’s all good

LINDA SHAPLEY Publisher

michael@coloradocommunitymedia.com

750 W. Hampden Ave., Suite 225 Englewood, CO 80110

June 8, 2023

eaddenbrooke@coloradocommunitymedia.com

AUDREY BROOKS Business Manager abrooks@coloradocommunitymedia.com

ERIN FRANKS Production Manager efranks@coloradocommunitymedia.com

that ever happened to you? It has certainly happened to me.

When we find ourselves reminiscing, we sometimes drift off into the daydreams of happy times and incredible memories. That day we first held hands, that first kiss, our first football championship, our first beer together, and so many other firsts. Or we go down memory lane, reminded not just of our “firsts” in life, but of many years of shared hardships, hurts, disappointments, wins and celebrations. Reminiscing brings back joyful moments of those we have lived our lives with and through, and just how special each moment was to us during those seasons of life. Do you have any of those memories? I sure do.

While reminiscing brings fond memories of years gone by, we sometimes visit that other side of our memories as we lament the missed opportunities in life, lost chances of love, and the mistakes

Columnists & Guest Commentaries Columnist opinions are not necessarily those of the Elbert County News.

We welcome letters to the editor. Please include your full name, address and the best number to reach you by telephone.

Email letters to letters@coloradocommunitymedia.com Deadline Wed. for the following week’s paper.

SEE NORTON, P13 ELBERT COUNTY NEWS (USPS 171-100) A legal newspaper of general circulation in Elizabeth, Colorado, the Elbert County News is published weekly on Thursday

by Colorado Community Media, 750 W. Hampden Ave., Suite 225, Englewood, CO 80110.

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Elbert County News 13

June 8, 2023

KAHANE FROM PAGE 12

Progress is being made in the field of mental health.

Stress and anxiety operate on a spectrum. When you’re challenged by either or both, it’s often due to a number of contributing factors and conditions not just one source. Your stressors are not going to be exactly the same as your friends’ or family members’. Friendly advice is well-intentioned, but most of the time does not help you work through and resolve the latent sources of your stress and anxiety. This is because what

NORTON FROM PAGE 12

we may have made along the way. We don’t often hear the word “lament” anymore. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines “lament” as, to express sorrow, mourning, or regret often demonstratively, or, to regret strongly, or, to cry out in grief. Those are some very strong words that should emote some very deep feelings.

When given the choice, most of us would probably prefer to reminisce about the good old days, right? We can laugh with one another, embrace one another, and choose to only remember the best times of our lives. There is nothing wrong with that and as a matter of fact I highly recommend it.

There is no greater cure for the blues than spending time with a family member or friend stirring up our greatest and most memorable escapades of our past.

Yet there is also something to be said of lamenting our past, our sorrows, our griefs, and the challenges we have faced in all our years here on earth. The struggles have been real,

works for your sister or work colleague may have nothing to do with what is at the core of your anxiety.

On top of this, stress and anxiety can be treated in different ways at different stages in your life. When you commit to your mental wellbeing you have a real opportunity to unlearn the belief systems you have about how much the mental, emotional and physical parts of yourself depend upon each other for your wellbeing and capacity to thrive.

and support than ever before. There are also new treatments available, as well as support groups and other programs designed to help you with challenging anxiety and stress manage your symptoms and recover from trauma in your life — so you are living a more productive and fulfilling life.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for managing these issues, so it’s important to seek out appropriate interventions that work best for you.

There are more opportunities for treatment and support.

UnLearn the pattern

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, there are more opportunities for treatment

the hurts have been devastating, the challenges have brought us to tears, and the disappointments many and plentiful. Why would I say that there is something to be said about lamenting our past? Because sometimes even the pain brings back memories of something once cherished. Because sometimes it’s healthy to lament, and feel the pain so that we can maybe finally let it go. And sometimes, it’s OK to never let go of something or someone we cherished so deeply, that is now lost, because it keeps us connected forever.

The daughter who lost her mom before her wedding day laments that she couldn’t experience that special occasion with her mom. The same daughter reminisces each holiday about how special her mom made each and every holiday, bringing both tears of sorrow and tears of joy to her face. Do you see how they can both exist in the same moment?

How about you? Do you love and appreciate the moments where you get to reminisce about the best, happiest, and craziest times of life with your family and friends? Do you also lament those moments in life where you wish things could’ve been differ-

ABOUT LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Colorado Community Media welcomes letters to the editor. Please note the following rules: • Email your letter to letters@coloradocommunitymedia.com. Do not send via postal mail. Put the words “letter to the editor” in the email subject line.

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Letters advocating for or against a political candidate or ballot issue will not be published within 12 days of an election.

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of owning that you are struggling and take a look at what services are available to you. Make appointments with a few mental health professionals whose approaches fit your needs.

Nothing changes until something changes, and avoiding your pain is like putting a band-aid on a severed limb. Give yourself the gift

Christine Kahane, NBC-HWC, MCHWC – is a Nationally BoardCertified Health & Wellness Coach, and owner of KAHANE COACHING (www.kahanecoaching.com), located at 30752 Southview Drive/Suite 110 in Evergreen, CO. For more information about coaching, or to write-in a question for UNlearn it! send your inquiries to christine@ kahanecoaching.com.

ent? I would love to hear your story at gotonorton@gmail.com, and when we can remember all of the sweet, bitter and bittersweet moments of life that shape who we are, it really will be a better than good life.

Michael Norton is an author, a personal and professional coach, consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator of individuals and businesses, working with organizations and associations across multiple industries.

Memory In Loving

Place an Obituary for Your Loved One. 303-566-4100 obituaries@coloradocommunitymedia.com Self placement available online at ElbertCountyNews.net

14 Elbert County News

LOCAL

LIFE

June 8, 2023

Private dog park site gaining pup-ularity

BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

S

ince Elle Ritt started renting her Wheat

Ridge yard to fellow dog owners in November, she’s hosted birthday parties for pups, pooch photoshoots and doggie play groups almost every weekend.

Ritt is one of dozens of renters in the Denver metro area on a website called SniffSpot, which links people interested in sharing their yard with local dog owners who want a private fenced area to let their pups off-leash.

Through SniffSpot, renters set an hourly rate per dog and time slot availability for users to book.

With two older dogs who need less exercise, Ritt said she wanted to let other dogs take advantage of her large yard and, so far, there has been no shortage of demand.

“It’s just mindblowing how frequently it’s used,” she said.

Ritt said a majority of her visitors don’t have their own yards and prefer to avoid public dog parks because of reactive or sensitive pups. The site allows users to tailor their search to fit needs like a taller fence height or not having other dogs or animals visible.

Dr. Rebecca Ruch-Gallie, a 23-year veterinarian at Colorado State University’s Community Practice clinic, said the uncontrolled nature of dog parks leads to risks like fights and disease transmission, which is why she typically recommends other ways to exercise dogs, such as daycare or private yard time.

In addition to walks and playtime, RuchGallie said some dogs need to run and all dogs benefit from exploring new routes and places.

Ruch-Gallie said she will sometimes take her pups on what she calls a “sniff-ari.”

“They take in the world much differently than we do, so give them those different scents to pick up and opportunities to see and smell different things,” she said.

“Sometimes they just want to go, go, go and get their energy out and other times they just want to meander and take the sniffs in.”

Mike Rieber, who has been renting his fenced pasture in Parker since October, said one of the best perks of sharing his yard is seeing how excited pups get to check out new scents and release their energy.

“They call it a SniffSpot and I never really understood how important that was to a dog, but that’s the first thing they all do when they get here is smell everything,” Rieber said. “Especially with the repeat dogs, as soon as their paws hit the ground, boy, they’re off.”

Ritt’s experience has been similar, she said, adding that SniffSpot has been mutually beneficial, not just for the dogs, but also the humans.

She’s received multiple thank you notes from visitors and attests that catching glimpses of visitors always makes her smile.

“It’s so cute to peek in the backyard and see grown men laying on their stomachs taking pictures of their puppies,” Ritt said.

Another SniffSpot user, Lyndsey Leach, who

rents her Lakewood backyard, agreed. Leach lost her own pooch three years ago but remains an avid dog-lover.

“It’s so nice when they’re comfortable and running around,” she said. “I’m always happy when they’re happy.”

None of the three renters report issues with destroyed yards, rude users, neighbor complaints or unruly animals.

In addition to the positive mental health benefits, Leach said renting her yard is a convenient passive income and gives her the flexibility to be away from home if needed. Leach estimates that since she started in January, she’s had about 50 visitors and made around $400.

“I don’t really have any expenses associated with it, other than eaten tennis balls,” she joked.

Rieber said he didn’t originally think he would make much money from the app but has been happy with the extra cash. He noted the demand is only picking up in the warmer months, though he got a fair share of visitors during the winter as well.

“We’re not trying to maximize our revenue, we’re doing this more as a service for young people that have dogs and need a place that’s private,” he said.

For Ritt, her most recent month was her most successful, cashing in over $1,000, and before that, she averaged a few hundred dollars monthly.

“One of our dogs has had a ton of health issues, so it’s like SniffSpot funds her care,” Ritt said. “It truly has been a notable supplemental income.”

To learn more, visit sniffspot.com.

SEE DOG PARK PHOTOS, P15

Elbert County News 15

June 8, 2023

DOG PARK PHOTOS

A doggie play group poses in Elle Ritt’s Lakewood yard, which she rents to other dog owners through a website and app called SniffSpot. Ritt said sharing her yard benefits PHOTOS COURTESY OF SNIFFSPOT everyone involved.

Bailey, an Australian Cattle Dog, runs around Mike Rieber’s pasture in Parker. Rieber joined SniffSpot to provide a service to dog owners who don’t have yards or want to avoid dog parks.

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16 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

Colorado repeals law limiting municipal internet I

BY TAMARA CHUANG THE COLORADO SUN

By the time Longmont voters rejected a proposal in November 2009 that would have let the city’s electric utility build faster internet service, Sandi Seader wasn’t surprised the measure had failed.

It was the fierce opposition that shocked her. The opposition, led by the cable TV industry, had raised more than $200,000 to fight the burgeoning threat to their business.

“We weren’t expecting anyone to campaign against it, which is totally naive now that I think about it,” said Seader, the city’s lobbyist at the time and now assistant city manager. “And, of course, municipalities can’t advocate for or against their own ballot issues. We were hamstrung. It had to be a private citizen group that would come out and support the bill, but that wasn’t quite realized yet.”

While many U.S. households had access to broadband in 2009, the much faster gigabit-fiber service Longmont wanted to build was practically unheard of. There would be many more battles between Colorado’s municipalities and the industry. That’s because a 2005 state law required every local government to ask voters for permission to build. When Longmont asked in 2009, the measure failed by 12 percentage points.

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Senate Bill 152 was promoted by the cable industry as a way to prevent wasting taxpayer money on infrastructure projects, like municipal internet.

Towns, however, could still pursue it, as long as no one else offered “advanced service,” or internet speeds in excess of 256 kilobits per second, according to the law. But this was 2009, when about 63% of Americans had broadband at home and speeds averaged 7-8 megabits per second, or 30 times faster than 256k. Gigabit service was about 4,000 times faster, though largely unavailable from telecom providers.

Longmont asked voters again in 2011. But this time, it added language like “without increasing taxes” and mentioned the city-owned fiber network built in the ’90s. A citizen’s group rallied and the effort benefited from the publicity of Google Fiber. The measure passed with 61% in favor.

Two years later, the city of Centennial put the question to voters and it, too, passed. Montrose, Boulder, Yuma County and other areas found success the following year. As of November, 122 towns and about 40 counties had opted out of Senate Bill 152, according to the Colorado Municipal League.

The only failure? Longmont, during its first attempt in 2009.

Last month, Colorado repealed the referendum requirement and nixed the kilobits reference with the passage of Senate Bill 183.

Support came from all sides, including the cable industry, which was neutral on the legislation. But there was another reason for the timing: federal broadband funding. The Colorado Broadband Office wasn’t sure if communities that hadn’t opted out would be eligible for a piece of the up to $1 billion in federal broadband funds Colorado could receive. Now, there’s no question.

“Removing this barrier means cities and counties that had not opted out no longer have to overcome this massive task,” said Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office.

Many other states adopted broadband restrictions similar to Colorado’s, as cable and telecom providers funded campaigns, recalled Kevin Bommer, executive director for the Colorado Municipal League, which represents 270 cities and towns in the state.

Bommer said the telecom industry was hoping to avoid “want what they thought was unfair competition from government owned or operated telecom or even television,” he said. “When Senate Bill 152 was introduced, it was a straight-up no local government can do this period, a pre-emption. Our lobbyist (Geoff Wilson) was able to slow it down enough that it was in doubt and the proponents cut a deal. And the deal was that municipal ownership and operation of telecom and broadband was illegal — unless voters gave permission.”

After Longmont received the blessing of its citizens, the city won approval again two years later for a $45.3 million

bond to build the citywide service.

Construction began in 2014 and the first customers for the new NextLight service signed up later that year. In 2016, the city was named the third fastest service in America by PC Magazine, which mentioned that Comcast covered 93% of the town. The following year, Longmont ranked first and the publication realized it was NextLight’s edge that made the difference. Longmont has stayed near the top ever since.

And the bond?

It’s on track to be paid off by 2029 and “We’ll be, I hate to say, flush with cash but (that means) we’ll be spinning off a fair bit of cash to put back into and reinvest in the community,” said Valerie Dodd, NextLight’s executive director.

NextLight’s gigabit service is available to 92% of the city’s households (“We’re in continual build mode because the city is expanding and growing at what is roughly 1% a year,” Dodd said). The gap includes apartments and mobile home parks where the city needs the owner’s permission to install the service. Of businesses and residents who are able to sign up for service, 60% have.

“We have absolutely leveraged our electric utility and couldn’t have done it without them,” Dodd said. “I always like to remind people that our measuring stick is not profitability.

Our measuring stick is connectivity for everyone. We are not picking and choosing neighborhoods or apartment complexes. It’s truly access for all.”

Passing Senate Bill 152, however, didn’t mean a town was getting fiber internet anytime soon, if ever. It just gave officials the right to start the conversation.

While some cities, like Longmont, issued bonds to build their system, others, like Centennial, built a fiberinternet backbone and then leased access to private internet providers to offer gigabit service to individual households.

Other cities opted out and decided to let private companies handle it altogether. Lakewood, which opted out in 2019, owns some fiber lines that it uses to manage traffic signals or is used by the school district. In November, Lakewood officials announced that Google Fiber would build fiber-to-the-home service to as many households as possible. A wireless version will be offered to apartments and condos.

The city isn’t building the infrastructure. Google is.

Partnering with a private internet provider was always the focus, city spokesman Dan Stoutamire said. The first customers are expected to be online by early 2024.

“The city council initiated the ballot measure in order to position the city to be able to best take advantage of opportunities that might arise,” Stoutamire said in an email. “Generally, Lakewood is considered to have good connectivity, though residents have regularly expressed a desire for alternative providers that might bring

increased speeds and/or lower costs.”

Meanwhile, Westminster, which so actually never opted out of Senate Bill th 152, partnered with Google Fiber in w February. eff Construction is scheduled to begin later this year, city spokesman Andy Le st said. lu With each passing year, more cities n and towns voted by a large majority ga to opt out. There was a cost to taxpay- h ers: paying to put the question on the fu ballot. The Colorado Broadband Office sa estimated the cost for a ballot measure m was between $5,000 and $40,000, de- In pending on the size of the municipality.

“And one of the chief complaints, fr primarily from the counties, was that fu it costs money to do these elections tu and it does,” Bommer said. “We had a couple (asking) why do we have to ba do these? They’re passing by 70, 80, 90 m percent sometimes and it’s just a waste Te to have to do it.”

A There had been attempts in the past m to repeal the law but none got very far. ba The telecom industry was open to end- gr ing the referendums, but always asked p for something in return. Bommer said ar CML wasn’t willing to compromise on n behalf of its local government clients. h Then came COVID-19. The pandem- p ic reprioritized community broadband th in a big way. While many Coloradans p in metro areas had internet options and in some cases, a choice of gigabit ba providers, many areas still did not. And fu even in some lower-income urban areas, the cost was high. Households preferred to pay for mobile service instead of higher-cost broadband at home.

“You had kids who couldn’t go to school and so their parents were driving them to a parking lot of Walmart or the library so they could pick up a strong enough Wi-Fi signal so they could do their homework,” Bommer said. “It was like, something’s got to change.”

Hello, 2023.

Bommer credits Reitter, at the Colorado Broadband Office. Her team pushed for a clean bill with two goals: Drop the need for a referendum and modernize the language. The bill left rules in the statute to keep private companies from having to compete against public ones that may also control rights of way, permits and fees. The Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association didn’t protest the passage of Senate Bill 183, which became law May 1.

“We agree repealing the public referendum requirement is long overdue,” said Jeff Weist, who represented the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association in 2005 and still does. “We are also pleased to see the legislature chose to retain the provisions in current law prohibiting a local government from using its regulatory authority to advantage its own competitive service offering.”

Nationwide, there’s been a stir, too.

Two states, Arkansas and Washington, removed some or all restrictions in 2021. But there are still 17 states with SEE INTERNET, P17

Elbert County News 17

June 8, 2023

INTERNET FROM PAGE 16

some form of restriction, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which tracks municipal broadband efforts.

“When Longmont started, there was still this idea that broadband was a luxury, something nice to have. And now it’s pretty much universally regarded as something everyone should have access to, needs access to really fully participate in modern society,” said Sean Gonsalves, who documents municipal broadband efforts for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

The federal government’s big infrastructure package and broadband funding created even more momentum for change.

As part of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, or BEAD, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will soon be giving $100 million to every state to improve broadband. States must create grant programs to allocate money to private and public providers. The remaining funds are reserved for areas with a higher number of unserved and underserved households, often in communities passed over by private internet services that for one reason or another, didn’t provide it.

With BEAD, state governments with bans must share how they’ll award the funds by project and community. That

may be why more states could end restrictions this year, Gonsalves said.

“At least now there’s a mechanism where some of these states are going to have to publicly account for these laws, which I think anyone outside of Congress or the big incumbents would find strange that here we are, 30-odd years after the Telecommunications Act, which was supposed to bring competition (and yet) we have this massive digital divide in this country, despite the promises and the subsidies that these big companies have gotten over the years,” Gonsalves said. “A lot of communities, like Fort Collins, said, ‘Look, let’s do it ourselves to deliver the reliability, the kind of affordability and the communitywide benefit that these networks can bring, and not just rely on the monopoly provider or duopoly providers in power.’”

With the success of municipal internet in Colorado and elsewhere, he added, “more and more communities are now seeing this as a very viable possibility for them and would like to access some of these funds.”

The timing was right to fix any confusion with Colorado’s law, said Reitter, with the state Broadband Office. About 75% of Colorado cities and 30% of counties had not yet opted out and most of those were in the eastern and northwestern regions of the state.

They’re smaller and rural and lack financial resources to host an extra election. They’re also the areas with the greatest need for reliable broadband. With no clear opt outs, the state’s broadband office felt there could be

legal issues if they provided those communities a share of the federal grants.

“The state’s position before Senate Bill 183 was not to fund communities that haven’t opted out. Funding projects in these localities could create a higher risk situation that the project would be completed in time,” Reitter said. “Even if we like a project that was located in an area that was pending a ballot initiative, it would be extremely risky for us to award that project before May 1 when the law changed.”

According to the NTIA, there’s nothing in its rules that would delay BEAD funding to states with restrictions on municipal networks. But states must show how they plan to work with all potential providers, from small to large private providers to municipalities.

“We want grant funds to support the best networks possible. To do that, we’ve asked states to create a level playing field on which municipalities; cooperatives, and small, medium, and large companies can all compete for these funds,” an NTIA spokesperson said in an email. “Our rules require states with such restrictions to demonstrate their ability to conduct a competitive subgrant program.”

In Pueblo, one of the last to opt-out in November, it’s business as usual for the city, community and private companies as everyone moves forward toward getting all households adequate broadband. Mayor Nick Gradisar said the city only put it on the ballot after talking to a local internet provider hoping to expand.

“We were having some conversations with a fiber provider and the question came up whether we’d opted out of Senate Bill 152. And well, shucks, it turns out we hadn’t,” Gradisar said.

“And they said that’s maybe going to be a problem because this could be construed as the city getting into the internet business, which we didn’t really have any plan to do.”

Now that that’s taken care of, the growing Pueblo West community appears to be getting multiple options.

Highline, which acquired RTC Broadband in Pueblo, has been installing in the Pueblo West community since 2021.

In March, Comcast announced it would expand there as well, by investing $75 million into its Xfinity 10G network. Construction has begun with service in Pueblo West anticipated by this fall.

“They did not have adequate broadband and they were always complaining about the service in terms of speed,” Gradisar said. “There’s 34,000 people out there and it’s spread out. So it’s not an inexpensive place to provide those kinds of services. … I think it was a competition thing that caused Comcast to decide this is a market we need.”

The Colorado Sun co-owns Colorado Community Media as a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy. It is a reader-supported news organization dedicated to covering the people, places and policies that matter in Colorado.

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18 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

Adaptive sports have become core to Colorado skiing S

FR

BY TRACY ROSS THE COLORADO SUN

When Kevin Wilson was a kid growing up in Texas and Oklahoma he told his parents that if he didn’t get a college football scholarship he was going to move to Colorado to ski bum in the winter and raft guide in summer.

It made sense, what with his dad being a coach of all trades — football, basketball, baseball — and Wilson his heir to the interscholastic sports dynasties of eight different counties. School sports were the family’s life save for weekends. Then they’d drive to their cabin in New Mexico to ski at Angel Fire and Red River resorts, flying downhill amid the scents of pinyon pine and Englemann spruce.

But when Wilson was 16, he was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. There began a long period of recovery and rehabilitation, learning to use a wheelchair, and pain pills doctors prescribed to the tune of 300 every time he went in for a checkup, while failing to address the pain itself, he says. Through it all he managed to go to college, meet his wife and survive heavy partying and drinking. But he suffered from depression linked to his inability to move through the world as he once did.

Then, in a fit of inspiration in 2014, he and his wife came to Colorado.

They loved it so much, they moved to Broomfield. Wilson had heard of Eldora ski area, but it wasn’t until 2018 that he found out about the Ignite adaptive ski program housed at the resort, and went there to try skiing after his wife signed him up.

On a form his instructor gave him to list his goals, he wrote, “I want to be an independent skier and I want

Adaptive Adventures runs weeklong camps that “create an immersive and social environment where adaptive skiers and riders can elevate their skills while forging lifelong friendships,” their webCOURTESY OF ADAPTIVE ADVENTURES site says.

to work for Ignite.”

It would take a couple years, but Wilson would achieve exactly what he wanted. He’s now a sit skier, a ski instructor and Ignite’s operations manager at an auspicious time for the non-profit.

Founded as the Eldora Handicapped Recreation Program in the 1970s, Ignite struggled along, first out of the back of a van, then out of a used AT&T shed and for 20 years, in a couple of cramped trailers in the corner of Eldora’s lower parking lot near the EZ chair and beginner terrain.

The program grew, surviving a fire in 2006 and basking in the spotlight of the Today Show’s Lend a Hand Program. In 2008, it received a grant from the United States Olympic Committee, allowing it to start serving disabled veterans. And in 2010, with its current name, it topped 1,000 lessons given by about 200 volunteers in a single season, after which it was “bursting at the seams” in its modular buildings.

A curveball arrived in 2014, when Eldora’s old owner, Bill Killebrew,

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threatened to shutter the program by refusing to renew its lease at the resort. He welcomed the program back the following season as Dave Levin, Ignite’s then board chair, started discussing the possibility of Ignite raising funds to build its own facility.

In 2016, Powdr Corporation bought Eldora and Levin kicked off a capital fundraising campaign with $250,000 of his own money.

Fast forward a few years and Brent Tregaskis, Eldora’s current general manager, says, “Ignite was maybe going to build a two-story building and rent the top floor back to us. But John Cumming, Powdr’s founder, was like, ‘Look. We should build it.

We should own the building and give them a 99-year lease.’ You don’t want to have a little quarter of an acre (of your property) owned by somebody else.”

Levin died of cancer before he could see Powdr, Eldora and Ignite kick his dream into high gear. “The only thing more important to him than Ignite was his family,” Carol Nickell, Ignite’s executive director, says. On May 18, Eldora broke ground on the facility. The new building, set to open for the 2024-25 season will span 12,000 square feet with roughly half going to Eldora’s ski and ride school for children and half to Ignite.

Nickell says Ignite is raising $1.9 million toward construction and an endowment to insure future programming. Tregaskis, while refusing to give a hard number, says Eldora is putting up many millions more to make the co-operating space a reality.

“Financially, it would have been better not to that,” he adds. “But John’s idea shows he’s really committed to Ignite.”

As, it seems, are the 15 Colorado resorts that report supporting some sort of adaptive programming, according to Adrienne Saia Isaac of the National Ski Areas Association (“although there could be more; some folks are better than others about filling out their info,” she adds).

A short list includes the National Sports Center for the Disabled at Winter Park Resort, which teaches adaptive lessons and has a competition center for athletes wanting to race at the elite level. Vail and Beaver Creek both offer “integra-

tive lessons” for individuals needing W extra support in any of its general ski d school group lessons. With Telluride in Adaptive Sports, if you’re skilled la enough, you can go heli-skiing with te Helitrax and an adaptive instructor. af The Breckenridge Outdoor Edu- o cation Center offers group or indi- ad vidual lessons at Keystone, Breck ca and Copper; Steamboat Adaptive se Recreational Sports hosts multi-day re camps for kids and adults; Foresight 70 Adventure Guides for the Blind, an an independent non-profit operatW ing out of Beaver Creek and Vail for ad level-4 skiers with visual impairtr ments, matches coaches to skiers in based on skiers’ ability and helps ro them fine-tune existing skills; and h at Vail Resorts-owned Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Crested Butte d Adaptive Sports, which operates ta independently of the resort, recently w built a $14 million, 25,000-square- A foot, four-story, ski-in, ski-out base li facility with living quarters. co Some of these programs have been ad around for nearly as long as the re- n sorts they’re housed in, while others in moved in later. Ignite came to Eldora st five years after it opened in 1970.

NSCD started up in 1970, 40 years p after Winter Park Resort. Telluride a first spun its lifts in 1972 with adap- to tive lessons in its general ski school, p while the non-profit Telluride Adap- ti tive Sports Program opened on its is premises in 1995. And while Steam- o boat Resort opened in 1963, Steam- Th boat Adaptive Recreational Sports o o (STARS) didn’t start until 2007. w These programs and a handful more now give thousands of snow sports lessons each winter to people ti affected by disability at resorts that so don’t appear too concerned about m the programs bringing them a profit. se Ig Winter Park gives NSCD free lift vo tickets and “a generous rent rate” on their offices beneath the Balcony ga House at the base of the resort, am Diane Eustace, NSCD’s communi- te cations manager, says. And “while in theory, we’re losing space, we’ve N been a longtime partner of NSCD ad because we’re a bunch of people who believe the outdoors are for E everyone,” Jen Miller, Winter Park an C spokesperson, adds.

Chris Werhane, adaptive sports sa ar lead at Adaptive Adventures in se SEE SKIING, P19

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Elbert County News 19

June 8, 2023

SKIING FROM PAGE 18

Westminster, says people affected by disability are increasingly interested in skiing because “everyone in the last 30 years has been born with technology,” and people aren’t afraid as they were before to step out of their comfort zones. He cites advances in prosthetics technology, cars with hand controls, public bus services like Bustang, which serves resorts up and down Interstate 70, adaptive-compliant hotels and adaptive sports programs.

With increased access to adaptive adventure and adaptive adventure travel improved, some of the onceinsurmountable-seeming barriers to rolling up to a resort and shredding have been lowered.

As for the high cost of tearing down the slopes in search of a goggle tan, “that’s a barrier for anybody wanting to go skiing,” Werhane adds.

Adaptive equipment — for things like sit skis and outriggers — can cost thousands of dollars. Many adaptive snow sports programs are non-profit, so they rely on fundraising, donations and in-kind gifts to stay running.

“But look at Breck’s adaptive program,” Werhane says. “For $165 a day you get a lift ticket, an instructor and the ability to ski on a $6,000 piece of equipment the Breck adaptive center bought. Breck probably isn’t going to get their money back on that purchase in one to two years.

Thank goodness they and many other resorts comp tickets because otherwise a lot of these programs wouldn’t exist.”

Thousands of Colorado’s adaptive ski instructors are volunteers, so paying them isn’t a problem; many resorts will donate day or season passes to them. Nickell says Ignite’s roughly 250 instructors all volunteer. In the 2019-20 season, 244 gave 1,085 lessons to 285 students, amounting to 14,253 hours of volunteer time at a value of $399,365.

“We do what we do really well,” Nickell says.

But Erik Weihenmayer, the blind adventurer who has climbed Mount Everest, kayaked the Grand Canyon and skied the Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt with guides, says not all volunteer instructors are equal either in guiding ability or sensitivity to their students.

“I like some programs, but the problem with others is that you show up and you don’t know who your guide is,” he says. “I can’t speak to other disabilities, but as a blind person, it’s about creating relationship, trust and communication. You can’t snap your fingers and do that in five minutes. You have to have consistency. You’re listening to the person guiding you. You’re learning to read each other’s minds so when your guide says turn left you know exactly what they mean by that. If you don’t have consistency, if there’s a new guide every time you go skiing, then

it’s a problem and a lot of organizations fall short in that way.”

He also takes issue with the prices he says some adaptive programs charge: “I went to Vail one time and they were gonna charge me $500 — over $200 for me and $200 for my guide. I go, ‘Wait, my guide is my eyes, folks. He should be free. He’s simply here to guide me down the mountain. I can’t see and you’re gonna charge me double?’”

Weihenmayer is a high-level skier, so a program like Foresight Adventure Guides for the Blind works better for him anyway.

“I like them because I can call them up and they’ll pair me with the right person who guides me from behind,” he says. “Most blind guides guide from the front, but guiding from behind is better, because as a sighted person what do they tell you to do? Look down the fall line. They don’t tell you to lean your head back to try to listen to a guy behind you.

If your guide is in front of you, the sound comes back and you ski into it.” With the right guide and using this method, Weihenmayer says he skis aggressively, with good form, and makes “nice, round turns.”

Programs like Ignite, Telluride Adaptive Sports and 30-year-old Crested Butte Adaptive Sports Center, which annually attracts around 800 people with physical and developmental disabilities, have improved their facilities, increased their offerings and given their instructors the opportunity to train with the Professional Ski Instructors Association. Crested Butte adaptive went over and above in 2019, when it constructed the massive ski-in, ski-out Kelsey Wright Building in the resort’s base area with funds raised in a capital campaign. Their center also offers veterans, active military and first responders with disabilities — and their families — $50 fullday lessons for summer and winter activities. The special rate extends to veterans, active military and first responders who have a family member or child with a disability.

So what do resorts get for supporting adaptive programs?

Jessica Conyers, a therapist who works for the Veterans Administration at the Valor Point Domiciliary in Lakewood and helps coordinate the largest rehabilitative ski and snowboard program in the U.S., the annual National Disabled Winter Sports Clinic for Veterans, says for over a week every March, veterans from across the country descend on Snowmass to try adaptive skiing or snowboarding for the first time or to continue their adaptive journey.

“Without a doubt, snow sports provide enormous benefits to veterans, especially those I work with who may have a history of substance abuse and are thrill seekers and are looking for a way to get that adrenaline rush to maybe replace their substance habit,” she says.

Teresa Parks, Conyer’s colleague and director of the sports clinic, adds, “For each veteran or those supporting veterans it costs around

$1,700 to $2,200 dollars for the week, depending upon where they are coming from.”

That program and others like it bring residual cash to resorts and resort towns, through family members supporting adaptive adventurers learning everything from alpine skiing to snowboarding to Nordic skiing and snowshoeing, and through adaptive skiers, snowboarders, Nordic skiers and snowshoers falling in love with these sports and introducing them to their families, says Werhane.

“I had a kid, she’s almost 30 now, when I was doing a children’s program at Winter Park,” he adds. “The family was at Vail, and she wasn’t skiing because they didn’t know about Vail adaptive. I got called out to do a 3-day lesson. After skiing in the morning, it was like this is cool, you skied in Winter Park, that’s great.

She’d never skied with her family before, and after that, she did. Now, 15 years later, they own a condo at River Run, she’s been skiing for 20 years and her kids volunteer. They bring their friends up to Vail, Winter Park and Breck all the time. Those resorts have captured them for the season. That’s a lot of money coming back into resorts because of adaptive programs.”

With its new facility at Eldora, Ignite will have greater ability to give some of the 1,015,417 adults in Colorado living with disabilities a chance to try or continue taking in the exhilaration, fun and freedom of

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sliding on Colorado’s most famous substance. In doing so, Conyers says, they may find relief from some of the difficulties of living with a disability.

It’s well-known how time in the outdoors coupled with movement and nature’s beauty can help anyone, and Nickell says as the closest adaptive ski program to the Front Range, with a larger space and easier access to skiing, Ignite is poised to broaden the reach of adaptive skiing while enticing more people to contribute to its longevity.

“A lot of our volunteers and their friends and community members have somehow seen our program and are touched by it,” she adds. “We have amazing adaptive programs throughout Colorado, but there’s a magic about Ignite that inspires people. I think a big piece is our core volunteer base. Once you’ve seen it in action you can’t help but donate.”

When that happens, adaptive athletes, adaptive programs, ski areas partnering with adaptive programs and resorts all benefit. Eldora plans to have its new Ignite/children’s center up and running for the 2024-25 ski season.

The Colorado Sun co-owns Colorado Community Media as a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy. It is a reader-supported news organization dedicated to covering the people, places and policies that matter in Colorado. Read more, sign up for free newsletters and subscribe at coloradosun.com.

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20 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

Calls for metro district reform mount Homeowners fed up with metro districts but changes are hard to come by

BY ROBERT DAVIS YELLOW SCENE MAGAZINE

Andrew Sorensen and his wife Samantha were elated when they bought their home in Broomfield’s Baseline neighborhood in September 2022 after nearly a year of bidding on homes that were overpriced and uninhabitable in some cases.

However, Sorensen said that excitement quickly turned to trepidation after the couple learned that their home was controlled by a metropolitan district, a controversial tool that Colorado developers use to build homes.

Sorensen’s home is part of Baseline Metropolitan District 3, one of nine metro districts that are responsible for developing homes and maintaining the necessary infrastructure like roads, water lines, and sewer systems. Colorado law also allows metro districts to issue bonds to finance its work, and those bonds are often paid back through property tax mill levies.

So far, the metro district has codified about $764 million in bonds that it can issue to investors. The debt incurred by these bonds would be paid back by Baseline homeowners over the next several decades.

There’s just one catch: The board members that set the Baseline Metropolitan District’s tax levels all work for McWhinney Real Estate Services, the developer building the neighborhood.

Homeowners say they want some way to make Colorado’s special districts more transparent and engaged with FILE PHOTO their residents.

“When McWhinney owns the land, the rights to develop it, and the right to charge Coloradans whatever the company would like to finance the project via bonds, can you call it anything but self-dealing?” Sorensen asked Colorado lawmakers in February.

Like other homeowners in Colorado, Sorensen wants greater transparency and responsiveness from his metropolitan district’s governing board. For example, Sorensen said he and his neighbors don’t know if McWhinney is charging them a fair price for their development services.

He added that they also have no say in whether McWhinney raises the district’s mill levy in the future.

This could effectively price Sorensen, and other homeowners, out of the neighborhood if they are unable to keep up with property tax increases, he said.

“These practices should be far more heavily regulated than they are,” Sorensen added.

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m t d t o m A m i

Elbert County News 23

June 8, 2023

DISTRICT FROM PAGE 18

Metro districts and homebuilding

Metropolitan districts have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as Colorado’s challenges with housing affordability continue to fester.

These districts were created in the 1980s to help solve a very practical problem. Colorado’s economy was under significant pressure as employment nosedived in government, retail, and hospitality due to enormous speculation in the state’s housing market. As a result, local government tax receipts declined and caused them to be financially unable to support new infrastructure and community development projects even as the state’s population increased.

Metro districts offered tax-hobbled jurisdictions an alternative financing model for infrastructure projects. Instead of only using tax subsidies, metro districts can raise debt from private investors by selling bonds and use those proceeds to fund construction. These districts then collect property taxes from homeowners to pay for their maintenance expenses.

In 2000, there were about 200 metro districts in Colorado. Today, there are more than 2,300 metro districts in Colorado, according to the Special District Association of the Division of Local Government. Groups like the Colorado Association of Home Builders say metro districts can improve housing affordability by reducing the per

unit infrastructure costs by between $30,000 and $40,000. But homeowners like Sorensen think there need to be more safeguards in place to limit the amount of debt that metro districts can issue.

For example, the more than $760 million in bonds that the Baseline Metropolitan District can issue is about 72% greater than the city and county of Broomfield’s total outstanding debt, according to Broomfield’s latest comprehensive financial statement. Collectively, the 2,300 metro districts in Colorado hold more than $1 trillion in debt, which dwarfs the state of Colorado’s more than $37 billion of total debt.

“Unchecked, some of these financial structures could easily lead down a road of mass foreclosures or whole communities defaulting,” Sorensen said.

Metro districts also don’t seem to be helping to make Colorado homes more affordable. Colorado’s median home price has skyrocketed by more than 93% over the last decade from about $288,000 to more than $558,000 as of March 2023.

Rents for a two-bedroom apartment in major cities like Denver and Boulder have also increased significantly. In Denver, rents have increased by 120% from about $830 in 2013 to about $1,967 today, according to data from RentCafe.

Boulder’s average rent has increased by 137% over the same time period, from about $1,060 to more than $2,300, according to RentCafe.

Recent reform efforts

Despite some glaring issues with metro districts, legislative reform efforts have been hard to come by

in part because of the strong lobbying efforts from developers.

Colorado lawmakers introduced multiple bills during the 2023 legislative session aimed at metro districts. One bill, House Bill 23-1090, sought to prohibit the directors of metro districts from purchasing the bonds that they issue through another entity. It was introduced by Democrat Rep. Mike Weisman of Aurora and Sen. Robert Rodriguez of Denver.

Weisman told the House Finance Committee that the bill is designed to create “higher restraint” on the part of metro district directors before they issue debt on behalf of the homeowners they represent.

“I want to be clear that there is a role for government debt. The state has it for school and fire districts,” Weisman told the committee. “But in just about every other case, those who purchase the debt do so at an arm’s length from those who issue it.”

However, HB23-1090 attracted significant pushback from groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors Rocky Mountain Chapter, the International Council of Shopping Centers, and the Colorado Chamber of Commerce to name a few. The Senate Local Government & Housing Committee voted to postpone the bill indefinitely by a 4-3 margin at the end of March.

Instead, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 23-110, a bipartisan bill that explicitly allows metro district directors to purchase this kind of debt.

SB23-110 also requires additional transparency from metro districts regarding the debt issued and requires the entity to get the opinion

of a registered municipal advisor regarding the market fairness of the debt incurred.

SB23-110 also gained the support of many lobbyists who did not support HB23-1090 such as the Adams County Regional Economic Partnership, the Colorado Infrastructure Council, and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Supporters of the bill like Maryann McGeady, an attorney with McGeady Becher P.C., a law firm that represents special districts, told lawmakers that SB23-110 ensures there is a standard set of best practices for all metro districts to follow.

This includes clarifying information that needs to be included in a metro district’s service plan and which entities will be responsible for maintaining the district after it is complete.

But Colorado residents like Alex Plotkin, who lives in Boulder, told lawmakers that SB23-110 would simply add to the financial problems that homeowners in metro districts face.

“Statewide, this is becoming a multi-billion dollar issue with no signs of abating,” Plotkin told lawmakers in March. “So as the citizens of Colorado are struggling financially, representatives at all levels are further exacerbating the issue by enabling additional financial burden on countless citizens who have no say in the matter.”

Governor Jared Polis signed SB23110 into law on April 3.

This Yellow Scene Magazine story via The Associated Press’ Storyshare, of which Colorado Community Media is a member.

www.ColoradoCommunityMedia.com/Notices

PUBLIC NOTICES

Public Notices call Sheree 303.566.4088 Legals City and County Public Notice NOTICE OF PROPOSED SCHOOL BUDGET Notice is hereby given that a proposed budget has been submitted to the Board of Education of the Elizabeth School District for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023 and has been filed in the office of the Superintendent of Schools where it is available for public inspection. Such proposed budget will be considered for adoption at a regular meeting of the Board of Education of the District to be held at 634 South Elbert Street, Elizabeth, Colorado on June 26, 2023 at 6:00 P.M. Any person paying school taxes in said district may at any time prior to the final adoption of the budget file or register his or her objections thereto.

Board of Education, Elizabeth School District Dated May 22, 2023 Legal Notice No. 25007

First Publication: June 8, 2023 Last Publication: June 8, 2023 Publisher: Elbert County News Public Notice DOUGLAS COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT RE-1 LEGAL NOTICE OF PROPOSED SCHOOL BUDGET Notice is hereby given that, at a properly noticed public meeting on May 23, 2023, a proposed budget has been submitted to the Board of Education of Douglas County School District RE-1, Douglas and Elbert Counties, Colorado, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023, and has been filed in the principal administrative offices of the School District, 620 Wilcox Street, Castle Rock, Colorado, 80104, and online at the Douglas County School District website at www.dcsdk12.org, where it is available for public inspection.

Formal adoption of the proposed budget will be considered at the regular meeting of the Board of Education, at the Wilcox Administration Building, Castle Rock, Colorado on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, beginning at 5:00 p.m.

Any person paying school taxes in said district

legals@coloradocommunitymedia.com

may either at such June 20, 2023 meeting, or at any time prior to the final adoption of the budget, file or register his/her objections thereto.

Douglas County School District RE-1 Dated: May 23, 2023 Ronnae Brockman Board of Education Assistant Secretary Legal Notice No. 25005 First Publication: June 1, 2023 Last Publication: June 15, 2023 Publisher: Elbert County News

Metropolitan Districts Public Notice NOTICE OF BUDGET AMENDMENT Pursuant to 29-1-106, C.R.S. Notice is hereby given that an amended budget has been submitted to the ELIZABETH FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT for the 2022 fiscal year. A copy of the amended budget has been filed in the office of the ELIZABETH FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT, where same is open for public

inspection. The amended budget will be considered at a regular meeting of the ELIZABETH FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT to be held at Station #1, 155 W. Kiowa Ave., Elizabeth, Colorado at 6:00 P.M. on June 13, 2023. Any interested elector of the ELIZABETH FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT may inspect the amended budget for 2022 and file or register any objections thereto at any time prior to the final adoption of the budget. This meeting will be held via Teams: Microsoft Teams meeting Join on your computer, mobile app or room device https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/join-a-meeting?rtc=1 Meeting ID: 226 113 017 543 Passcode: YqdhdJ Dated this 1st day of June 2023.

ELIZABETH FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT BY:/s/ Wayne Austgen, Secretary Legal Notice No. 25006 First Publication: June 8, 2023 Last Publication: June 8, 2023 Publisher: Elbert County News

Notice to Creditors PUBLIC NOTICE NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of BRIGITTE WADE, A/K/A BRIGITTE MARIE WADE, A/K/A BRIGITTE M. WADE, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 30024 All persons having claims against the abovenamed estate are required to present them to the Personal Representative or to the District Court of Elbert County, Colorado on or before September 25, 2023, or the claims may be forever barred.

Russell J. Jackson Personal Representative c/o Law Office of Brian Budman, P.C. 5105 DTC Parkway, Suite 150 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. 25000 First Publication: May 25, 2023 Last Publication: June 8, 2023 Publisher: Elbert County News

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Elbert County Legals June 8, 2023 * 1

24 Elbert County News

June 8, 2023

Carnival Rides:

JUNE 8-11, 2023

Open Thursday, June 8 from 4:00 pm – 10:30 pm

Festival and Carnival Rides:

FREE ADMISSION

Friday 4 pm – 10:30 pm Saturday 10 am – 10:30 pm Sunday 10 am – 8:30 pm

PARKER’S FAVORITE WEEKEND! Shopping H FOOD H EXHIBITS H MUSIC H RIDES H FAMILY FUN

Groove Mazda MAIN STAGE – Live Music ALL Day

CARNIVAL RIDES & GAMES: presented by

HEADLINERS: Friday, June 9 presented by 8:15 pm: Still They Ride (Journey Tribute Band) Saturday, June 10 presented by 8:30 pm: Chris Daniels and The Kings Sunday, June 11 presented by 5:15 pm: That Eighties Band

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: CORE Electric Cooperative Community Stage

BUY DISCOUNTED UNLIMITED CARNIVAL RIDE WRISTBANDS ONLINE Thursday Friends & Family Special 4 wristbands for $99 Only available for use on Thursday, June 8 Sold online through 12 noon Wed. May 31 Single-Day Unlimited Carnival Rides: $35 each Good any one day during the festival Sold online through 12 noon Wed. June 7 4-Day MEGA Unlimited Carnival Rides: $89 each Good all 4 days of the festival

PURCHASE DURING THE FESTIVAL Single-Day Unlimited Carnival Rides: $40 each

supported by

TICKETS FOR INDIVIDUAL RIDES

Food, Beverage & Ride Tickets may be purchased at Festival Ticket Booths.

EAST MUSIC Stage

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Special Hotel offer from our host hotel, Holiday Inn – Parker – E470/Parker Rd

SPECIALTY APPLIANCE CHEF DEMO STAGE parkerdaysfestival.com

Please go to ParkerDaysFestival.com and click on Host Hotel tab for more details

Parker Days Festival is brought to you by the Parker Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation